Communications Tower
Hey guys. Been quite a while since i made a thread about anything, but as i promised in the what are you working on thread, here's my now recently updated communications tower UDK environment i've been working on for the past few months/weeks..stuff.
It started off as an idea of some large generator in an enclosed room with fauna and what not growing outside, but then i decided why close it off?
I admit there are plenty of areas for improvement, the backdrop is still a bit bland and empty, but the trees work well. Unfortunately, they only look good from this angle however, looking out off the tower on the other side, the trees are getting hit by all of the light from the D-light and so aren't casting many shadows at this distance making that area a lot brighter and greener than the trees in the pics.
There's still alot to do, i've got ideas for have some kind of energy lines coming out of fragtures along the valleys in the ground with some faded walls of light erupting upwards which hopefully will break up a bit of the generic trees. I also hope to have alot more unique pieces in the tower itself, it's still missing some mechanical arms for the displays and i intend to modify the floor panels so that some are broken and have wires and pipes protruding up.
Anyway, here are the screens:
It started off as an idea of some large generator in an enclosed room with fauna and what not growing outside, but then i decided why close it off?
I admit there are plenty of areas for improvement, the backdrop is still a bit bland and empty, but the trees work well. Unfortunately, they only look good from this angle however, looking out off the tower on the other side, the trees are getting hit by all of the light from the D-light and so aren't casting many shadows at this distance making that area a lot brighter and greener than the trees in the pics.
There's still alot to do, i've got ideas for have some kind of energy lines coming out of fragtures along the valleys in the ground with some faded walls of light erupting upwards which hopefully will break up a bit of the generic trees. I also hope to have alot more unique pieces in the tower itself, it's still missing some mechanical arms for the displays and i intend to modify the floor panels so that some are broken and have wires and pipes protruding up.
Anyway, here are the screens:
Replies
The only thing that stands out as you stated are the monitors, they seem plain and generic compared to the rest of the scene. Looking forward to see what you do with the mechanical arms. Great work so far! Keep it up.
the force field effect around the energy beam, is that something UV'ed right onto the sphere, or are you using a vector and a sphere mask, so the location of the effect can be changed at anytime.
But I agree on the monitors.
EvilPixills Yeah i agree on the monitors, the current texture it's using didn't really have much time spent on it, i was just putting things together to get the feel of the scene. I'll be spending alot more time on this area soon though.
passerby The energy cone at the top of the beam is actually a hash job. I've been meaning to go back into it and optimise it a lot more, but currently it's basically just a cone mesh with a modifed material of the UDK lightbeam with added panners on a stretched texture (think i'ts the cloud mask texture it's using at the moment) to get the whirling motion.
A bit OTT too, i think i've used maybe 10-15 instances of the same cone to get the feel i wanted, it was late, i'd had some drinks lol. Looks nice, but could be done a lot better.
C86G While it does pass for a mash up of some halo and mass effect stlye concepts, one of my main actual thoughts while i was making the first block outs was the communications tower in Final Fantasy 8!
There are still some issues with this base mesh atm, the pistons at the top are in the wrong place/size to actually allow the large arm to move so i need to reposition these.
Edit: pic update of the scene.
Bit unsure on the placement, at the moment it seems to be blending in with the pipes behind it, will need to sort that out.